Friday, July 26, 2013

Thomas Adès's Violin Concerto "Concentric Paths"

Continuing my series of program notes:

Thomas Adès (born 1971)

Violin Concerto ‘Concentric
Paths’

I.Rings

II.Paths

III.Rounds

Thomas Adès is still young
enough to attract the sort of praise lavished by critics on rising stars. Critics
praise his conceptual ambition, the energy of his ideas, his mastery of
technical intricacy...

But Adès is now an
established artist. The ‘Promising New Voice of British Music’ has reached his
40s and his music has the assurance of a long-burning beacon rather than a
flash in the sky. ‘Not unlike the Prospero so memorably characterized in his Tempest
opera,’ says writer Thomas May, ‘Adès has learned to tame the maelstrom of
energies churning through his earlier scores; at the same time, his work of
recent years seems to enrich the composer’s unassailable gifts for colour,
lyricism, and jump-cutting excitement with a more sustained, humane coherence.’

Adès is best-known for works
such as 1997’s Asyla, the Grawemeyer
Award-winning work programmed by Sir Simon Rattle, in a sign of his high
estimation of Adès’ talent, as part of Rattle’s final concert as Music Director
with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and his first concert as
Principal Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Adès’ two operas have also
attracted great attention. Powder Her
Face is an irreverent satire drawn from tabloid stories that chronicled the
fall from grace of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, the centre of a scandalous
divorce trial in 1963. Powder Her Face was followed up with a Covent Garden commission, Adès’ sensational
adaptation of Shakespeare’s The
Tempest, whose Ariel is echoed in the high-pitched violin part of this
concerto. One of the great pleasures of listening to Adès’ music (even in the
‘scintillating ferocity’ of his early music) is the feeling of tradition behind
it. The echoing-through of older concertos gives this work a great deal of its
poignancy. The opposing tug of freedom also generates a great deal of the power
of Adès’ music.

‘Concentric Paths’ was a
joint commission of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Berliner Festspiele and
was premiered in September 2005 at the Berliner Festpiele and BBC Proms by
Andrew Marwood and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under the baton of the
composer.

It is a leaner and more
austere work than many of Adès’ earlier pieces. As with other Adès works, its
brief duration possesses ‘a high density of musical thought per square inch’
and requires intense concentration on the part of the soloist.

In three movements, the
work’s traditional references are altered by Adès when he throws the emotional
weight on the middle movement ‘Paths’, more than twice the length of the outer
movements. Why is the work subtitled ‘Concentric Paths’? As Adès points out, each
of the movements proceeds according to its own circular design.

‘Rings’, the first movement
begins with pinched high notes, and revolves around aerial oscillations and
gliding instrumental lines. The stratospherically high violin part will remain
characteristic of the work throughout its shimmering length but may also hark
back to Ariel’s part in The Tempest.

Adès describes the second
movement, ‘Paths’, as involving ‘two large, and very many small, independent
cycles, which overlap and clash, sometimes violently, in their motion towards
resolution.’The intensity of the
movement is signalled at the outset by the intermittent outbursts of compressed
(simultaneous) solo violin and brass timbres. There is a sense of huge movement
and weight. Thomas May speaks memorably of the movement’s ‘seismic, grinding,
relentless energy.’ Critics have noted the strain of lyricism which has come
through in recent Adès’ works and this movement ends in virtual song.

Songlike lyricism appears also
in the final movement, not long after the lumbering opening. As the first
movement came to a sudden, though appropriate end (we sense the closing of the
circles), so too does this concerto.

Mention has been made of the
way Adès’ music reflects tradition. Given that the lyrical modernism of this
work may at times remind the listener of Berg, Ligeti, or even, perhaps, Prokofiev,
this work belongs comfortably in the pantheon of great modern concertos.

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please
contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet.
If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:

Edward Elgar's Froissart, published 2 July 2013Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, published 3 July 2013Franz Waxman's Carmen-fantaisie, published 6 July 2013Jan Sibelius's Oceanides, published 8 July 2013Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod, published 12 July 2013 Aaron Copland's Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson, published 18 July 2013John Williams' Escapades, published 22 July 2013

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About Gordon Kalton Williams

He has devoted himself to understanding the link between words and music and dramatic action, and combines musical sensitivity, command of language and an instinct for the physics of drama.
Australian born, Gordon travels to and from the USA.